Last week, the Medical Devices Group on LinkedIn held an interesting webinar entitled “Why Manufacture in Costa Rica?” Speakers included George Blank (Chairman of the Board for Vention Medical) and Pilar Madrigal (Director of International Affairs for the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency or CINDE) and was moderated by Joe Haag (founder and manager of the Medical Devices LinkedIn group).
George started off the discussion with a long list of why Costa Rica is a great place to manufacture products.
- The business climate is ethical, honorable, and conducive to growth and success.
- Costa Ricans are honest, happy, young, loyal, and passionate. There is a great emphasis on education in Costa Rica, so the populace is very talented and well educated.
- Costa Rica is a democracy with clear rules of law, and government officials are very accessible.
- Labor costs are lower than the US.
- The free trade zone has no local or federal taxes and no tariffs for all products sold outside of Costa Rica.
- Costa Rica has similar intellectual property protection as the US.
- Costa Rica is only about 4.5 hours from the US and is on a similar time zone to the US.
- Costa Rica has a proven track record as many medical device companies have setup operations there.
- They have high tech facilities, offering the latest in clean room and sterile technologies and manufacturing techniques and equipment.
- Costa Rica has shipping ports on both sides of the country, good ports and roads to ports, and great airports and harbors. (If you are a tourist, you may not see this good infrastructure. The country has been focused on making sure transportation for businesses has been improved before improving infrastructure for other parts of the country.)
George also had great things to say about CINDE. It is not a government organization but works very closely with the government. CINDE has been very fast-moving in its help to grow Vention’s facilities in Costa Rica (up to 5 facilities with 190,000 square feet and 550 employees as of today). CINDE helped Vention through every step of the way and through all rules of law.
Pilar spoke for a few minutes about some of the 40+ international companies that have operations in Costa Rica. She also talked about the upcoming Life Sciences Forum (March 18-20, 2013) to be held in Costa Rica. The forum will include discussions, conferences, and panels addressing challenges facing the medical device industry. There will also be opportunities for site visits to companies who currently manufacture products in Costa Rica and time to learn more about manufacturing there.
